Competing in the smartphone market dominated by iOS and Android is one of the great challenges in the tech industry—even for companies with strong platforms and deep pockets like Microsoft and BlackBerry. For those companies trying to bring entirely new smartphone operating systems to market—like Mozilla with its Firefox OS—it's even tougher.

Mozilla has good news to report, though. Four hardware makers (Alcatel, LG, ZTE, and Huawei) stand ready to make Firefox phones to be sold later this year, from 17 carriers across the globe. Mozilla also said it has the first commercial build of its Firefox OS ready to be previewed at Mobile World Congress.

The announcement shows Mozilla is ahead of Canonical's Ubuntu for phones in terms of both the stage of technology development and ability to publicly announce partners. Still, there is far to travel. Firefox phones will hit the market this year overseas, but not in the US until 2014 according to Computerworld. And while the hardware makers on board are well-known, they're not dominant players in the smartphone market. Samsung, the world's most successful maker of Android phones, has reportedly said it has no interest in selling Firefox phones. Samsung already has an alternative operating system in the open source Tizen (which is being combined with the failed Bada OS).

The smartphone market is a big one, though, and perhaps Mozilla can gain a foothold overseas. "The first wave of Firefox OS devices will be available to consumers in Brazil, Colombia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela," Mozilla said. "Additional markets will be announced soon."

A path to the US market is possibly evident in the list of carriers ready to sell Firefox phones. Although AT&T and Verizon Wireless aren't on the list, Sprint and Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile's owner) are on board. The other carriers announced by Mozilla are América Móvil, China Unicom, Etisalat, Hutchison Three Group, KDDI, KT, MegaFon, Qtel, SingTel, Smart, Telecom Italia Group, Telefónica, Telenor, TMN, and VimpelCom. The first phones are expected to launch mid-year from América Móvil, Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, and Telenor.

While Firefox and Ubuntu phones both have raised excitement among technophiles, Firefox may have an advantage Ubuntu doesn't: widespread name recognition. Many potential phone buyers who have never heard of Ubuntu Linux could well be familiar with Firefox because of its status as the world's second-most popular Web browser and the availability of the Firefox browser on Android phones.

Firefox's answer to the question of how to build a viable mobile platform for applications is that the Web itself is the platform. "Firefox OS smartphones are the first built entirely to open Web standards, enabling every feature to be developed as an HTML5 application," the company says. "Web apps access every underlying capability of the device, bypassing the typical hindrances of HTML5 on mobile to deliver substantial performance. The platform’s flexibility allows carriers to easily tailor the interface and develop localized services that match the unique needs of their customer base." Facebook and Twitter will be integrated into the system, Mozilla said.

That message has appealed to some carriers who hope Firefox OS will help level the playing field. The next step is building phones consumers actually want to buy and use.

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Blackberry is also pushing HTML5 solutions. I wish Mozilla luck. (Blackberry also has an Android backup plan in its apk to bar conversion.)

I have stated often that unless you need to use a sensor on the phone, the app can run in a browser. At a time when everyone is talking up the "cloud" for data, few are championing the "cloud" for software. The problem is the appstore is a revenue generator, so the dominant players in smartphones have little to gain in HTML5 being successful.

Having run linux on Arm, Ubuntu is ahead of the pack. I wouldn't rule them out either.

Even if the Firefox phones are a total market failure, getting Gecko to perform well enough to be an entire OS has driven a number of beneficial changes to the architecture. Lots of work is being done to break parts of the gfx path off the main thread and is due to start landing in nightly builds over the next month. The progress being made here has been high enough that after being pushed aside ~18 months ago Mozilla's CTO is talking about getting 1 process/tab into the desktop browser by years end.

Interesting that the four announced OEMs also happen to be the 4 that kind of/sort of are going nowhere with their current Android and WP options.... looks like they are trying to catch onto something big in the hopes of getting a boost upwards. Seems like fishing with dynamite kind of tactic.

Both Firefox and Ubuntu phones really intrigue me... something different always does... but at this point in the game, there would need to be something groundbreaking to consider joining up to a 4th or even 5th mobile ecosystem. As it stands now, I'd have little to no problems migrating between WP, Android or even Apple because, since about 2007, I've been building up my own personal infrastructures in those ecosystems to allow such easy lateral movements. But why would I step away from all that work for a new platform and have to start from the ground up? It would have to be something really extraordinary OR offer an experience where everything I have in existing forms can be replicated.

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The cell phone market already has enough fragmentation. Competition is great, and will hopefully bring about new features for customers, but I see the late arrivals Ubuntu and Firefox phones having a more uphill battle than Symbian to attract new customers.

Is it just me or is everyone and their grandma throwing their hat in the mobile OS market? These late comers aren't going to be able to do much more than hold a small niche (if that) unless something extremely drastic occurs.

Interesting that the four announced OEMs also happen to be the 4 that kind of/sort of are going nowhere with their current Android and WP options.... looks like they are trying to catch onto something big in the hopes of getting a boost upwards. Seems like fishing with dynamite kind of tactic.

Both Firefox and Ubuntu phones really intrigue me... something different always does... but at this point in the game, there would need to be something groundbreaking to consider joining up to a 4th or even 5th mobile ecosystem. As it stands now, I'd have little to no problems migrating between WP, Android or even Apple because, since about 2007, I've been building up my own personal infrastructures in those ecosystems to allow such easy lateral movements. But why would I step away from all that work for a new platform and have to start from the ground up? It would have to be something really extraordinary OR offer an experience where everything I have in existing forms can be replicated.

The only way this is viable is if manufacturers release decent and cheap hardware that runs smoothly. sounds kind of hard but I'm rooting for Mozilla.

This is what I want. I was originally skeptical that this was going anywhere but now, more power to them. Given that I carry my tablet all over, I have less use of a full-power smartphone and I could use a cheap, basic one.

I hope Ubuntu and Firefox do well, as well as Taizen. I think we'd all be safer and better served if there was a highly diverse ecosystem of smartphone OS's, data (contacts and the like) is mobile/agnostic and standards were abided to. Certainly, I think Windows has helped ahow the problems with one OS having such dominance, and I'm worried that Google will be the next Microsoft, Android the new Windows, and Webkit the new IE (yes, I know this is over simplifying/paranoid).

Even if the Firefox phones are a total market failure, getting Gecko to perform well enough to be an entire OS has driven a number of beneficial changes to the architecture. Lots of work is being done to break parts of the gfx path off the main thread and is due to start landing in nightly builds over the next month. The progress being made here has been high enough that after being pushed aside ~18 months ago Mozilla's CTO is talking about getting 1 process/tab into the desktop browser by years end.

Blackberry is also pushing HTML5 solutions. I wish Mozilla luck. (Blackberry also has an Android backup plan in its apk to bar conversion.)

I have stated often that unless you need to use a sensor on the phone, the app can run in a browser. At a time when everyone is talking up the "cloud" for data, few are championing the "cloud" for software. The problem is the appstore is a revenue generator, so the dominant players in smartphones have little to gain in HTML5 being successful.

Having run linux on Arm, Ubuntu is ahead of the pack. I wouldn't rule them out either.

Firefox OS, I think it's the OS I'm least interested in. The screenshots have been rather unimpressive and the marketing of basing everything off web standards sounds like a direct copy-pasted of the design of webOS and that didn't go anywhere for palm. I'm really hoping that this mobile OS war works itself down to 3 or so options so that I don't have to spend more than half my time porting my own code to different platforms.

The cell phone market already has enough fragmentation. Competition is great, and will hopefully bring about new features for customers, but I see the late arrivals Ubuntu and Firefox phones having a more uphill battle than Symbian to attract new customers.

Thats just it: much of the fragmentation is within a single OS: Android. While price is a huge factor in the decision making process, a lot of people would prefer an iPhone if they could justify the cost because they are relatively the same as far as look and feel (from a perception standpoint) between launches.

If another player comes out with certain rules about how its OS will look and act across carriers--slap the handcuffs on manufacturer and carrier customization--but maintain a low price-point then there could be some considerable changes in the industry...or at least a big shift in who buys what.

Blackberry is also pushing HTML5 solutions. I wish Mozilla luck. (Blackberry also has an Android backup plan in its apk to bar conversion.)

I have stated often that unless you need to use a sensor on the phone, the app can run in a browser. At a time when everyone is talking up the "cloud" for data, few are championing the "cloud" for software. The problem is the appstore is a revenue generator, so the dominant players in smartphones have little to gain in HTML5 being successful.

Having run linux on Arm, Ubuntu is ahead of the pack. I wouldn't rule them out either.

As I recall, this is exactly what Apple wanted to do. There was no App Store in the first iteration of iOS because they wanted webapps to fill the role of expanded functionality. After jailbreakers started creating their own Apple got in the game because the demand for native applications was higher than needing to run something over the internet (and often in a browser).

I am really looking forward for Firefox and Ubuntu in the future, OS's that are plain crisp *nix wtih no adware attached. I really miss my Symbian days and would love to see a Nokia N900 successor with... 'buntu?

The platform’s flexibility allows carriers to easily tailor the interface and develop localized services that match the unique needs of their customer base.

That's one of the things wrong with Android, and here we go again. If you let carriers touch it, you'll have a mess in no time. Mobile OSs are one of the few cases where open is truly bad. Perhaps new players have to do that to get carrier acceptance and market share, but it is not good for consumers, ultimately.

I have stated often that unless you need to use a sensor on the phone, the app can run in a browser. At a time when everyone is talking up the "cloud" for data, few are championing the "cloud" for software.

While I think you've got a good point in principle, I'm also enough of a student of history (if we can call 2007 "history") to remember there was once this smartphone that came out that didn't support apps like the competitor from RIM did. That new "iPhone" ran everything in a browser. They weren't going to do an iPhone SDK, they said. Ajax'd give you all the app you'd ever need.

I'm not sure the world has changed all that much since then. Web hosting has gotten a little cheaper, but it's still a barrier to entry for Joe Smalldeveloper who just wants to get a simple app out there. In an environment where you run the program entirely on the phone, the developer doesn't have to also be an infrastructure administrator. Consumers still want applications they can use when their phone is in "Airplane Mode", or underground on the subway, or anywhere else that we find the wireless Internet ain't quite as ubiquitous as we want to think it is. These problems were big enough that Apple announced an SDK within a few months of the iPhone's launch.

It is something of an irony that open standards and the freedom that comes from them-- the very things that remove corporate oversight and the "walled garden"-- are the same things that will raise the cost of entry to developers such that they have to have more resources up front to put out an app, because they've got to host all the computing on their own server.

I wish them luck. As a consumer, more competition == more better. But I fear the deck's stacked against them. Or it would be, if I could get to my Solitaire app now. Damnit, zero bars...

I knew android was going to be big in 2008, but I also thought openMoko was going to be big as well.I am sort of in-between two worlds, I have my friends that make good money, owns iPhones and S3's etc, and then I also have friends that have the cheapest android phone metroPCS can sell.It seems like the biggest 'duh' is people just want what everyone else has, so if something is popular, they assume it's also the best, that's why it is popular.Unless the companies that plan to sell firefox or ubuntu phones do a lot of advertising, sadly neither might impact the smart phone world.It's not about app count (though everyone thinks it is) it about what everyone else already has. Android is a brand name, it's been advertised.

It got bigger market share than WinP/M each and every quarter up to 3Q2012 (now Samsung is phasing it out making room for Tizen).

And you do not get 6% of sold smartphones worldwide to been called "failing"

(Another US-is-whole-world "reporter" ... NA is 5th market when you count handsets sold, even for smartphones its not "the best/the most"... or another "reporter" who think that only high-end matter....)

There won't be any innovation unless ATT & VZ can control it and milk it for all it's worth.

But, there was another article that stated ATT supported a Firefox phone, just providing a dumb pipe to it. So, maybe they see something.

However, they could treat this as merely a dismissal opportunity when folks say they're clamping down on the market. "What do you mean? We let folks use a firefox phone if they want. We provide choices."

However, they could view this new demographic as a "fad", and not put forth a valid effort. IE: they'll put in some lip-service, and half-assed effort, then point to it later when it fails and say "see, we tried, but it didn't go anywhere." Yeah, b/c you half-assed it and/or you didn't WANT it to go anywhere (that would undermine your profit model).

Low end smartphone( Galaxy Y, Optimus NET, LOT's of Chinese Crap) cost about $150 in Brazil, Firefox needs a lower price to even get into market. Telefonica ( now called VIVO in Brazil) has a history filling Android phones with crap-ware that consumes a lot of battery, and also that company is used to delay android update for months. Another very important fact against Firefox OS is the "HTML5 only" apps, Mobile internet has a brutal high cost in Brazil, Internet app might be something consumers won't pursue when buying a new Phone.

Just to get the picture of what i'm talking about:TELFONICA (VIVO) Lowest Mobile internet Plan: USD $40 - Unlimited calls within same carrier and Area Code, 500Mb/month of internet traffic @ 1Mbps speed, After you hit the 500Mb it's "possible" to use internet with unlimited traffic @ 32Kbps (YES, I meant Kbps)TELFONICA (VIVO) Highest Mobile internet Plan: USD $250 - Unlimited calls within same carrier and Area Code, 1Gb/month of internet traffic @ 1Mbps speed, After you hit the1Gb it's "possible" to use internet with unlimited traffic @ 32Kbps (YES, I meant Kbps)

My personal Experience: The internet doesn't work all the time, the 3G seldom stop working.

But that is the whole point of Firefox OS. Rather than leaving out is more like covering markets that can take advantage of it. Like in North America it would be a waste since there's saturation from Android and iOS with the others pretty much trailing. In my country (Peru, for context), I know people who still has feature phones, few have Android and much fewer iPhones.

Seeing LG in the list makes me hopeful for good Firefox OS phones and since my carrier is Telefonica I might look into them. They might even be followed by Samsung and Sony if they do well.

EDIT: Although, being all web apps, service from the carriers needs to be better too.

Low end smartphone( Galaxy Y, Optimus NET, LOT's of Chinese Crap) cost about $150 in Brazil, Firefox needs a lower price to even get into market. Telefonica ( now called VIVO in Brazil) has a history filling Android phones with crap-ware that consumes a lot of battery, and also that company is used to delay android update for months. Another very important fact against Firefox OS is the "HTML5 only" apps, Mobile internet has a brutal high cost in Brazil, Internet app might be something consumers won't pursue when buying a new Phone.

Just to get the picture of what i'm talking about:TELFONICA (VIVO) Lowest Mobile internet Plan: USD $40 - Unlimited calls within same carrier and Area Code, 500Mb/month of internet traffic @ 1Mbps speed, After you hit the 500Mb it's "possible" to use internet with unlimited traffic @ 32Kbps (YES, I meant Kbps)TELFONICA (VIVO) Highest Mobile internet Plan: USD $250 - Unlimited calls within same carrier and Area Code, 1Gb/month of internet traffic @ 1Mbps speed, After you hit the1Gb it's "possible" to use internet with unlimited traffic @ 32Kbps (YES, I meant Kbps)

My personal Experience: The internet doesn't work all the time, the 3G seldom stop working.

Web app ISN'T attractive at all

FWIW Firefox OS is HTML5 running locally for everything as the default app language (vs writing local apps in Java or Objective C), not your phone being required to use data to pull everything from a remote server with the phone only being a dumb browser.

I was invited to a FirefoxOS developer day, presumably because of my experience as a WebOS developer. While there's some similarities between the two superficially, there are also really substantial differences. I left the developer day more impressed with FirefoxOS than I expected, but still not entirely sold on the platform. They are very much about Open Web Apps, and about everything running in a browser instance. At least at this time, no plug-in capability to run even a snippet of native code. So if you can't do it in JavaScript via one of the web standards that Firefox supports, then you can't do it. So no speech synthesis or recognition, no ports of games written in C++, no background services/notifications, etc. Crypto seems like it might also be a bit of a problem--it seems like Spotify couldn't cache and then decode their streams, for example.

WebOS had it's issues, but it wasn't as a pure web environment as FirefoxOS is. Frankly, I think WebOS was/is a little closer to the ideal mix than FirefoxOS is.

OTOH, there's a lot of stuff that you *can* do within the confines of a browser and hence FirefoxOS. No, it's not going to be everything you can do on iOS or Android, but I don't think they're aiming this at displacing those two platforms but rather at slotting in between the feature phone functionality and the "full-function" smart phone platforms. If they get the pricing right, it could be successful in that role.

As for the issue with data coverage, I agree that will be an issue for some applications. But for applications that don't need to do heavy data exchange, assuming they're set up correctly with a good appcache file, all the application's functionality will run locally without having to reload from the server, until a new version is available, and then it should update automatically. (As I understand it.)

The biggest issues holding me back from moving our apps over to the platform is some particular details around paid apps in the Marketplace. That the idea of supporting entirely international users whose language I don't speak, whose customs I don't understand, and who probably desire different things out of their smart phone apps.

My question has always been what are the security/privacy concerns if any web page can access key phone features like location/contacts/etc? I'm sure they've got checks/approvals/etc in place, but I'd still be nervous about it. I don't think I'd trade in my iPhone without doing a lot more research to be very comfortable with it.

My question has always been what are the security/privacy concerns if any web page can access key phone features like location/contacts/etc? I'm sure they've got checks/approvals/etc in place, but I'd still be nervous about it. I don't think I'd trade in my iPhone without doing a lot more research to be very comfortable with it.

Indeed they do. When an app attempts to access for example your location, you get prompted as to whether you want to allow it or not. Note that this permission is granted not on installation, but on use. And if you don't hit the button that says "remember this answer for this app", you have to grant permission every time. Also, remember no background services/applications. So one can't write an app to run in the background and monitor your location and pop a reminder when you get to a certain location. OTOH, a malicious application can't run in the background and track your movements. Security and convenience are often at odds with each other.

Access to certain things (possibly including contacts, I forget at the moment) require a level of certification that is only available to pre-installed applications.

Having said that, all security is imperfect and eventually somebody finds a clever way around it. As I think has been demonstrated by rogue / malicious / impolite / possibly useful apps on other platforms.

MS makes sense taking on Google and Apple. They have a massive ecosystem and a massive bankroll. Also, lots of experience and leverage in dealing with EMs.

What does Mozilla have, other than their browser, where's their ecosystem? How do they build an ecosystem to compete with MS, Google, and Apple, when they're basically broke in comparison?

HTML5 is great, but Google, Apple, and MS are heavily invested in HTML5 as well. So, does Mozilla just expect to more tightly integrate HTML5 web apps and local packages with their OS and expect that to sell their phone?

I believe that the foundation Mozilla is trying to capitalize on is their loyal, but dwindling, fan base. Some people will downgrade out of loyalty, but that's not a very good business model, to put it lightly.

The idea of the FF OS is not to compete with the big players in the developed world, but with Symbian in the developed world. There you need cheap phone that can open pages correctly, and believe me those people moving from Nokia 10xx series will not notice any "lag" in the platform. Also the web application lowers the entry bar - everybody can make an HTML with Word and there you go you have an application. The platform has advantages for the first world criers as well - they easily customize the interface and put all the "crap" they want. So need to cry about the overpopulated smartphone OS market, anyway the chances of FF OS reaching you slim as you are not the target audience.

Bada OS has the most succesfull smartphone OS launch ever in terms of sold units. As of Q4 2012, installed base of Bada devices was 26M. Installed base for Windows Phone had 22M. Hardly a failure.

During Q4 2012 Huawei had 9.3%, ZTE 5.7% and LG 4.0% share of smartphone sales. These were the 3rd, 4th and 7th largest smartphone manufacturers on this planet. Yes, they are not as dominant as Samsung or Apple, but you can hardly dismiss these. Their combined market share was 19% during Q4 2012.

The progress being made here has been high enough that after being pushed aside ~18 months ago Mozilla's CTO is talking about getting 1 process/tab into the desktop browser by years end.

Oh no The only reason I'm sticking with FF on my old laptop despite several downsides (no real synergies with my android phone, some laggyness with flash,...) compared to chrome is its lower memory footprint. If they go with the 1 process/tab implementation there's no way the memory isn't going to go up noticeably for no real benefit (when was the last time FF crashed? can't remember, the only thing that crashes is the flash plugin and that's already in its own process).